Living For Jesus by Living Like Jesus #1

This year our church passage for the year was Hebrews 12: 1-3. We adopted the tag line for it of 'Living for Jesus by Living Like Jesus.' I thought that it might be a helpful process to do a couple of reflections on what we have learnt over the next couple of days and perhaps a couple of days next weeks as well.

Reflection 1- The Gospel
Our studies this year were in Ephesians, Titus and Jonah (with a couple of Psalms thrown in for good measure). Ephesians 1-3 provides us with such a magnificent illustration of the Gospel and what God accomplishes through it in the lives of His people. Yet from start to finish it is all about God. We receive adoption from God according to His love for us in Christ (1:5). We receive redemption from God according to His grace to us in Christ (1:7). We receive an inheritance from God in Christ according to His will (1:11). We receive the Spirit as a sign that we are possessed by God through the work of Christ because of His faithfulness to us (1: 13-14). So we have found that all the spiritual blessings (every spiritual blessing 1:4) that we know in our life find their origin in God, expressed to us in Christ as an outworking of His character by His grace for the praise of His glory.

Reflection 2- Holiness
Living for Jesus by Living like Jesus is an exercise in what Ephesians 5:10 describes as finding out what pleases the Lord. It is an exercise in recognising that our hearts are revolting against God and our sin is revolting to God, yet by His grace we can put off the old self and put on the new being made new in the attitude of our minds. This is not a call to be as holy as the people around about us (although we are called to spur one another on in this) it is a call to be conformed to the image of Jesus, to exist for the praise of His glory. Jerry Bridges writes that, ‘Many Christians have what we might call a "cultural holiness". They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us. He has called us to be like Himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God.’